Poll

Business

Kittredge is now home to four businesses that provide everything from massage to children’s clothes.

By the Creek Tans & Stuff is open in Kittredge Village next to Bear Creek Restaurant. The 3,200-square-foot space houses a tanning spa, massage therapist, women’s and children’s clothing, artwork, jewelry and a dance studio for belly dancing and yoga.

It is planning a grand opening from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 11.

MOB Factory has closed its large indoor skate park on Bryant Drive, changed its focus to more retail sales and opened in a Bergen Park building next to the Whippletree.

The business has gone more boutique style, focusing on clothes, art and skateboards, according to Kyle West, the store’s event coordinator and marketing director. Plus, the move to Bergen Park allows MOB Factory to be more visible.

The MOB Factory shares space with JR Landscaping. Both businesses are owned by J.R. Iannaccone.

A riot of color greets customers as they walk into Hearts in Bloom, a silk-flower shop that opened last month in Marshdale.

The tiny shop is the dream of floral designer Judy Williams, who has always wanted a floral shop of her own. She had worked as a floral designer years ago, but the need for a more secure job took her into pharmacy work.

Williams spent more than 20 years as a pharmacy technician at a King Soopers down the hill. After retiring, she spent 18 months trying to decide what she wanted to do, and she says it always came back to floral design.

The next time you contemplate abandoning Evergreen for a restorative weekend somewhere cool and green and busting with local color, hang the car keys back on their hook and contemplate this — shoals of discriminating day-trippers from the Front Range and beyond have already done the math, and they’re coming to the heart of Evergreen.

“If you look at the percentages, the majority of people downtown on the weekend are from out of town,” says Janice Stutters, board member of the Evergreen Downtown Business Association.

A new ownership group has taken over the El Rancho Restaurant and totally revamped the menu and the service side. The owners have added extended happy hours, six more TVs in the bar area and cleaned the carpets twice.

The spacious dining room, which seats 163, now has tablecloths and fabric napkins, but the antler chandeliers, log walls, stone fireplace, rustic charm and western artifacts, such as Kiowa leather chaps, remain unchanged.

Real estate is still a buyer's market these days, but the picture is beginning to look a bit brighter for sellers than it did in 2008 and 2009, when the average price of a house in Evergreen/Conifer dropped 3 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

In this case the term "brighter" refers to the perception that the worst of the housing downturn is probably over, and that prices have hit bottom and are slowly starting to come back after the bursting of the nation's real-estate bubble. But many factors still are holding back the housing market.

The time was right for two friends to open a restaurant together on Main Street in downtown Evergreen.
Kitchen at the Creek has been open for almost two weeks, offering American cuisine with a French influence. The restaurant is open for dinner six days a week, with menu items including seafood, pizza, pasta, steak and chicken ranging in price from $10 to $16. There are also gluten-free and vegetarian menus.